


It Walks Like a Duck

by inalasahl



Category: CW Network RPF, Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Community: spn_reversebang, M/M, RPF, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-21
Updated: 2010-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 08:18:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/135138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inalasahl/pseuds/inalasahl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared hates bots, especially his sister's neighbor Jensen. But he'll have to accept Jensen's help, if he wants to get his sister back after she goes missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Walks Like a Duck

**Author's Note:**

> Blessings upon sffan for her extremely helpful beta. Some concepts borrowed from the Terminator series and other robot media. Written for the [2010 SPN Reverse Bang challenge.](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_reversebang/) Artwork by [caedoodle.](http://caedoodle.livejournal.com/193396.html)

  
[](http://caedoodle.livejournal.com/193396.html)   
  


 

* * *

It was later than Jared had planned when he got back from patrol. He'd been clearing a new section of the city, the remains of a skyscraper whose bottom two floors were thought to be salvageable, when Sadie had caught wind of a bot. He'd eventually found it pinned down under an arrangement of rocks and bronze that once might have been an indoor fountain or a sculpture. He didn't see any human remains around and hoped that meant whoever had tipped the thing over on it had gotten away. He'd approached cautiously; robots never really died so long as they had their power sources and their CPUs. He was only halfway through hacking through its neck when he heard the charging whine that meant it was powering up from sleep mode. Even moving as fast as he could, it still managed to get its free hand to his neck before he finished, and now his throat was sore and bruised. If it hadn't been an older model with its CPU in its head and not its chest, he never would have survived. "Jared!" Cassidy, one of the entrance guards, said as he returned to camp. "I thought you were on leave."

"I am," Jared said, handing the head over to her with a quick sketch he'd made of where the rest could be found. "My last shift ran long. I just came back to drop off Sadie and grab my stuff." Even after having lost 50 percent of the resistance to the new communities springing up, there was still less and less work for the soldiers to do as the truce spread. Time off had become mandatory. Jared thought the new rules were stupid. It wasn't as if he never saw Megan; he'd visited her just last month for a whole weekend. This visit was supposed to go for two weeks, and he had no idea what he'd do with himself. He hadn't had two weeks off since he'd joined the resistance at 14. He loved his sister, but she'd spent the years before the war ended in a camp school while Jared had been fighting. They didn't have much in common anymore. The thought of having to stay in an unsecured community made his skin itch and his stomach clench.

Sadie whined as he dropped her off at the kennels. Jared knelt down to give her a hug. "I wish you could come, too," he said. But he and Megan didn't have the means to feed her for two weeks. Anyway, she technically belonged to the resistance, though she'd been Jared's since command had partnered them when Jared was 15.

Lieutenant Morgan had been the one to make that decision the day after Jared had come back limping and bloody, the only survivor from a mission to blow up a bot factory gone wrong. "What the hell happened?" he said as he came roaring in to the med unit where Jared was being patched up. He'd blinked confusedly when Jared began to give his report and afterward he hadn't asked any clarifying details. Just barked out, "How old are you anyway, kid?"

"Nineteen," Jared had answered with a stubborn tilt of his head. He'd lied about his age when he'd dragged Megan into the resistance camp half dead from infection and fever. He'd worried they wouldn't want to take in two children, and he'd kept on lying ever since. He needed them to take care of Megan. If that meant fighting, even dying, he'd do it.

"Sure you are," Morgan had said. The next day Jared had been sent to the K-9 unit and been given an untrainable dog no one wanted, not even for breeding. It was a make work assignment to get him out of the way for a few months. No one ever thought he'd get her ready for real work, hunting or patrolling or guarding, but the joke was on them. Even then, with her caged up and given up, he could see that she wasn't stubborn or stupid, just picky about who she obeyed. In the first two years he'd had her, they had identified and taken down more bots and sleepers than all the other teams on the base combined. Even now, as she was getting on in years, there wasn't any other he'd rather have by his side.

"See you soon, Sadie," Jared said, and headed to the latrine to get cleaned up before he started the long walk to Megan's. It hurt to leave her behind even temporarily, the only real friend he'd ever had. It felt right then, when he went to the latrine and found Johnson there.

Johnson was a good sort. They didn't know each other well, but they'd helped each other out on a few occasions. Jared grunted in greeting, as he came to stand next to Johnson. He waited until Johnson nodded back to give him a look. "You wanna?" Johnson asked.

It was cold, but they already had their dicks out. Anyway, it'd been awhile for Jared. "You got a condom?" Jared wasn't going to waste one of his. Johnson flushed, but nodded. Jared tightened his jaw. If Johnson wanted soft words or a sweet little hand-job while trading kisses, he should have asked someone else, and Johnson knew that. This wasn't the first time they'd screwed. Jared tugged him a few feet away, out of sight of anyone else who came by, and pushed him to his knees. He snapped his fingers to remind Johnson about the condom, and put it on as soon as it was handed over. He spit on his hand and shoved two fingers in. Johnson inhaled sharply, but didn't complain, so Jared stretched him quickly and shoved in. He found Johnson's prostate with no problems, and his ass felt nice clasping his cock. He reached around and got him off, and then he manhandled the pliant Johnson into a better position for himself. It was a good fuck, hard and thorough. "Thanks," Jared said afterward. "Appreciate it." He sidestepped away from Johnson's attempt to give him a kiss and went to pack.

It might not have been the brightest idea to tire himself out right before a two-hour walk. At least the tension was manageable now, easily pushed to the back of Jared's mind. He swung both his packs onto his back, made sure he had plenty of ammunition for both his guns within easy reach, checked his knives and headed out of the camp.  


* * *

Jared saw more and more obvious signs of human life as he walked closer to Our Haven, the community where Megan lived. It made him nervous to see neat rows of cultivated plants, a child's toy lost by the side of the road recently enough to have not yet been weathered by the elements, and an animal carcass freshly run over by tire treads. The habits of a lifetime made it almost impossible for him to continue on rather than destroy them, but he gritted his jaw and tried to remember there was a truce in effect. Truce or no truce, it was foolish to all but post a sign reading "Living Humans Here." Jared didn't trust the bots any farther than he could throw one. One didn't spend two decades trying to eradicate all human life only to change one's mind, and decide it'd be better to establish a mutual government.

Even if he had trusted them, not all the bots had joined the truce. How could any sane person trust the ones that had to protect them when everyone knew bots could be reprogrammed? Living openly, gathered in one area, was a recipe for disaster. To a rogue bot Our Haven might as well be an advertisement for an all-you-can-destroy buffet.

It made him feel only marginally better that Megan lived on the edge of Our Haven, instead of at the center of the community. As he got nearer to Megan's living quarters Jared began looking around him to make sure he hadn't left footprints or other trails to her door. Megan may have decided she was comfortable living in Our Haven, but Jared still hoped she'd come to her senses and go into hiding. In the meantime, he wasn't going to be the one responsible for aiming a big arrow at the triplex she'd been rebuilding into a home.

At least he was on foot. Fuel was too scarce for Jared to have his own vehicle, even if driving hadn't made him nervous, too much metal and tech, like being surrounded by a bot. Megan kept trying to talk him into borrowing one from the base, though, ever since she found out he'd learned to drive for a mission. It had gotten more difficult to put her off since the main road between his camp and Our Haven had been cleared, though he'd told her repeatedly there was no good place near her to hide a vehicle.  


* * *

Jared sighed when he got to Megan's triplex. All three doors had been freshly painted, and the roof had been fortified, though at least it looked as if she or her neighbors had used old materials stolen from other buildings.

Megan greeted him with a hug. Jared wasn't much used to signs of affection. No point in getting attached to someone who'd probably die the next day. He'd relearned to put up with it for her sake in the last few years, though. For some reason, hugging meant a lot to his little sister. "J.T., you're late," she said. "I was worried."

Jared shrugged. "It always takes longer than I planned to get away from there."

"Jensen said the same thing, but I can't help but worry," she said. In a quieter voice, "I always worry I won't see you again." He squeezed her hand, knowing she was thinking of their parents who were dead, and their brother who'd left their shelter to get supplies one day, but hadn't come back. Jared was lucky to still have Megan. Most people didn't have any family at all. He froze when he caught on to what she'd said, "Jensen," his sister's neighbor, the robot.

"Hi, Jared," Jensen said. Jared looked at the robot and nodded politely. It hit him then, as it did every time he saw Jensen, how very human the robot looked, all except its eyes, a too vivid and unnatural shade of green. He would have to have another talk with Megan, though he dreaded it. Bad enough she was willingly living in a triplex with one; she didn't need to let it into her unit.

"What are you doing here?" It was hard to loom over something nearly as tall as you were, but Jared gave it a good shot. Megan might not know any better, but Jensen certainly did. Jared had made his feelings clear on multiple occasions.

Jensen held up the book it was holding. "I thought Megan might like to read this, and then we got to talking."

"Megan doesn't read," Jared said.

Jensen stared at Jared without blinking, as if the robot were examining him. "It's not a novel; it's about plumbing." It held the book out. When Jared reached out for it, the robot held on to his wrist. "Your muscles have tightened, and your heart rate has increased. Why?" Its grip was almost soft, no calluses on the hands, and only slightly cool to the touch. It felt nice.

Jared flinched and pulled away. "Don't touch me."

"I wouldn't hurt her or you. You're my friends."

Friends? Jared flashed a helpless look at Megan. She took the book from Jared. "Thanks," she said. "I'll take a look at it."

Jensen walked out, and Jared felt as if he could breathe again. "You shouldn't let it in here," he said.

"If he wanted to hurt me, you know I couldn't keep him out," she said. "So, let's just skip the fight, okay?"

"Fine." Jared took his packs off. He thought he'd leave his weapons on for a little while longer. "Here." He handed her a couple of books he'd found on patrol, and some pillow cases he'd traded for. He always tried to bring her a little something when he visited. He frowned down at the small bandage he'd just noticed on her arm. "What happened?"

"Nothing, nothing, it's just a little scratch I got at the market the other day from a robot. You know they don't all look —"

"Normal?"

"Human," Megan said firmly. "Anyway, we bumped into each other, and I got scratched by some needle-like thing he had sticking out. It's fine."

"Have you seen a doctor? What if that thing was trying to kill you? Who knows what it introduced into your system?" The bots had started germ warfare shortly before the end of the war, covering themselves in vaccine-resistant tetanus and other nasties to ensure that even when humans came out on top in a fight they might still be brought down.

"It was an accident, not an attack."

"You don't know that."

She sighed. "It's been years, J.T. When are you going to believe that the war is over?"

"Not that many years, and it's not like the truce is everywhere."

"But it spreads every day. You know I met a guy at the market last week who said he'd traveled all the way from Oregon without encountering a single hostile bot? He told me that he'd actually met someone there who'd traveled from British Columbia."

"They don't die, Megan. They don't die, and they can be reprogrammed at the drop of a hat. You know there are hundreds of miles around here that haven't been cleared yet, and that's assuming they come from aboveground. Someone could stumble on a hostile at any moment."

"A few uncleared bots here or there —"

"All it takes is one," Jared said. "That's how it started, with one. You remember that."

"I know you don't really feel that way," she said. She held up the presents he'd given her. "I know the pillow cases are for me. Am I supposed to pretend the books are, too? I don't even like to read."

"I found them," Jared says, jaw tight. "Figured you could trade them if you didn't want them." Yeah, maybe he'd known that Jensen, who read constantly, might be more interested in them than Megan. So what? "I know he's giving you fruit. Maybe I just want to make sure he has an incentive to see you don't starve to death."

She sighed. "I'm not the only one who's noticed, you know. Like the time I told you I wanted to fix the steps leading up to my door, and you brought me enough boards to do both our steps?"

Jared scowled. "I know you go over there all the time. Just because it can't be hurt falling through a rotted step —"

"He asks about you. He says he's never known anyone like you. You're interesting."

"Yeah, well, it's a sleeper. That's what they do, Megan. It's probably why it reads so much. They learn about people, so they can pretend to be them and infiltrate."

"Stop calling him it. He doesn't need to do that anymore, and —"

Jared wasn't going to stop. He had a hard enough time remembering what Jensen really was as it was. "That's Jensen's base programming, Megan. It doesn't go away, just because you wish it would. None of it does." He could see from the look on her face they were getting close to an argument. He looked at the book she was holding. "I guess this means you're still courting communal poisoning?"

She rolled her eyes. "I still have running water, yes."

"I'm going to go shower," he muttered and walked out of the room.  


* * *

The shower felt good, even if he still thought it was one of Megan's crazier schemes. It had been one of their first big fights after the truce, when she'd tracked him down and suggested he move to Our Haven with her. He'd refused, but gotten himself transferred to the closest unit based near-by.

The first few times he'd visited, she'd kept trying to get him to apply for a job in the new government. There was so much work to be done, they were taking everyone.

Jared had tried to explain it to her then, how Our Haven was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard of anyone doing, regardless of the truce, or that Our Haven was well within the safe zone away from the fighting. He didn't like it there, the way everyone got into bad habits. Their second worst fight had been when she'd proudly showed him how she and the others living in the triplex had worked together to get plumbing on, and now she had a water faucet right in her house. No more dragging buckets up from the river. "It still has to be purified," she said. "But we've been talking to a few other streets about ways we could get a treatment plant working again. Maybe in a few years —"

"Are you crazy?" Jared had shouted. The monumental stupidity of it had floored him. How many people was it? How many of them getting their water from the same unguarded spot? It wouldn't take any effort, at all. "Why don't you just drink poison now, and save the bots the trouble?"

Megan'd kicked him out then, told him to give her a month or two to miss him before coming round again. Jared had wondered then if it wouldn't be best for her if he just didn't come around at all. She had a chance at something maybe, but he was never going to adjust to this kind of life. Maybe she'd be better off if she didn't have to worry about him.

He'd suggested that to her the next time he came round, tried to explain that she didn't get it. She'd not even been born yet when the world ended and the bots started wiping humanity off of the face of the earth. By the time she'd gotten old enough to join the resistance, the war was over. She didn't get it, and it was easier for her to accept the truce, to start giving up the old habits of protection, but he'd never be able to. She'd slapped him then. "I don't get it?" she'd screamed. "Well, you were never a little girl who had to watch her family die and disappear until the one brother she has left dumps her in a resistance school, and tells her he's going off to fight, and he'll try to get word back to her once a year or so." She'd slapped him again for good measure and snapped in his ear. "Don't tell me I don't know what fear is or what the war was like." That had been their worst fight.

Jared had shut up after that, but he still didn't think the plumbing was a good idea. What if the bots had some kind of narrow swimming explosion bot that came through the pipes and killed her? He'd learned his lesson that day and tried to avoid complaining about all the ways he saw her committing suicide, but Jensen's proximity had a way of getting on his nerves.  


* * *

Jared still felt tense the next morning. Megan wasn't up yet. A morning run might make him feel better. He tore the flyleaf from one of the books he had given her and wrote a note to let her know where he was going. He strapped his thigh holster on and headed out the door.

He hadn't even gone a block when he saw Jensen talking, no pleading, with a group of older teens Jared didn't recognize. He figured out almost instantly the bot was being harassed. The boys were laughing just a little bit too loudly, the swing of their arms just a bit too wild, striking Jensen in faux-accident. Jared watched Jensen give up on whatever it was saying and seemingly decide to ignore them. It kept walking doggedly toward Jared, toward the triplex. The boys started poking him. "Hey," Jared said, moving toward them. "Knock it off."

They chortled. "It's just a bot, dummy." Jensen was carrying something, maybe it had been out picking berries.

Megan had gifted him with some the year before, talking about the bot giving them to her. "He's got tons of them, you know. He doesn't have to sleep, I don't think, and he can get farther into the plants than human gleaners, because he doesn't have to worry about scratches. He's been looking for bees, too, and if he gets some honey, he'll make preserves." That'd been how Jared had discovered that Megan's attractive neighbor, a guy he'd actually liked, was a bot. He'd yelled at her then. Bad enough she was being stupid enough to live in the open without her living next to a bot who could turn on her any second. "He isn't a terminator, Jared!"

"They're all terminators," he'd screamed back and stalked right out of her apartment. He'd come back sheepishly an hour later to get his weapons, and they'd made it up. Neither of them had forgotten, though. Megan pointedly still gave Jared small packages of gleaned produce from time to time with a comment about how lucky she was to have Jensen around.

Jared watched as Jensen clutched the package he was carrying closer to himself, almost protectively, and that decided him.

"So? That give you a right to be an asshole?" It wasn't because he liked the bot or anything. But the last thing he needed was for a bunch of jumped-up resistance rejects to start causing trouble near Megan. Trouble breeds, and Jared had heard of a few incidents inside Our Haven. What if they took such offense to Jensen living around here that they decided to burn the triplex down?

The tallest boy's eyes narrowed. "Who the hell are you?"

Jared pulled himself up, letting them notice just how tall he was. He was skinny, yeah, but he didn't have to work out to maintain his physique, getting plenty of reps just working every day. Besides, he was willing to bet that not a single one of them had ever been in a real fight with a bot. Kids, really, a bit younger than Megan, not old enough to have fought in the resistance themselves. They didn't know how fierce a fighter could be, how fierce they had to be when pitted against an implacable enemy which could make decisions in seconds and was armored from head-to-toe. "Shove off," Jared called out, pulling his gun.

They didn't back off, at all, but took a threatening step toward him. They were too stupid or soft to be scared. That's when Jensen's arm shot out and grabbed one of them. "No fighting," it said.

"We were just having a little fun," one of them said to Jared as if they were having a conversation.

Jared narrowed his eyes and stared back hard. "Get out of here," he said, and when they still didn't move he tossed a knife to Jensen. Jensen dropped the boy's arm and caught it.

They looked at one another and backed off. He heard one of them say it wasn't worth the money, and then they ran, tossing some insults over their shoulders. Jared looked at the bot. "So, what? You'll stand up for me, but not for yourself?"

Jensen's head was down. Jared couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm programmed to help maintain order and the rules."

Jared got it and felt stupid for not realizing. The bot wasn't programmed to defend itself, probably wasn't allowed. He wondered what else people did to Jensen.

"Thanks, Jay," Jensen said. Jared flashed it a look, but didn't answer. His sister was the only one who still called him J.T., and no one had ever just left it at Jay. He held his hand out for the knife. What the hell had he been thinking, giving a weapon to a robot? He tensed, preparing himself to fight if it wouldn't give the knife back. Jensen did hand it over, and Jared could tell that it noted how tense he was. "You really hate mechas, don't you?" Jared snorted at the word. Calling bots mechanical people didn't make it so, and it sounded even stranger coming from one of them. "Why help me?"

"What difference does it make?" Jared started jogging again.

It paced him. "You're always helping me." Jared didn't know what Jensen was talking about. Just because he did a little maintenance around the triplex from time to time to keep the place from falling down around Megan's ears — "I'm curious."

"You'd have to feel to feel curious," Jared responded without rancor. It was just facts. Jensen's mouth shut with a snap, and then it turned around to head back wherever it had been going before the whole thing had started, leaving Jared to finish his run in peace.

When he got back to the triplex an hour afterward, it was too late. Jensen was in scattered pieces and Megan was gone.  


* * *

Jared had never been this far into Our Haven before. The council building was shocking in its wholeness and beauty. It looked like the kind of buildings Jared had only seen in photographs from old books. He'd had no idea the community had progressed this far. He paced back and forth in the hallway, trying to ignore the number of bots coming and going. He was anxious to get out there, to find Megan. But finding Megan meant knowing what had happened, and that was something only Jensen could tell him once it was put back together.

It seemed to be taking longer than it should, though, and Jared was getting increasingly worried. The only clue he'd had that something bigger than Megan was going on was that Lieutenant Morgan and a group from base camp had arrived a half-hour earlier. Whatever was going on, they didn't just want the government involved, but the military, too. The resistance's command structure could be fluid at times, but one was expected to learn pretty quickly whose orders to obey, if one wanted to stick around and keep getting regularly supplied meals, weapons and shelter. Morgan was the closest thing to a commanding officer in camp, and their camp was the nearest one to Our Haven.

Jared had nearly given up, and was sliding down the wall to sit on the floor until he could come up with a better plan, when Murray, who was also in the military, finally came out and told him he was wanted by Lieutenant Morgan. "What's going on?"

"I'm not supposed to tell you, so look surprised later," Murray said. Murray had always been friendly with Jared, and he was probably the guy Jared was closest with that he didn't screw. "There's been an incursion, a bunch of civvies taken."

"Taken? By who?" Bots didn't kidnap people; they killed them.

"Your boy swears up and down that it was a bot who took your sister."

"He's not my boy," Jared said.

"Yet you know who I'm talking about. Nice to finally see him, after hearing you complain about him in practically every conversation we've had this year." That had to be an exaggeration. Murray elbowed him. "Sleeper, huh? You know they were designed to be able to imitate everything that a human can do."

Jared groaned. "That's gross, even for you."

"Remember to look surprised," Murray said just before opening the doors to the council chamber.

As soon as he walked in, Morgan started introducing him to the others in the room. Nearly half of them were bots. He looked around for Jensen, and finally spotted the robot sitting on a high bench in front of a side wall, the back of its head open and socketed into a series of tubes and cables threaded through the wall. Jared didn't know what they were doing, but he felt uncomfortable seeing it, as if he were watching someone be operated on. It seemed too private a thing, to be displayed like that.

"As you've no doubt already guessed, there was an incursion in Our Haven. For reasons we don't know, half a dozen people were taken from their homes this morning by mechas."

"You don't know?" Jared waved at the bot delegation. "Ask them!"

"The only reason we know anything at all is thanks to our assistant," one of the bots said. It was only vaguely humanoid in shape and spoke in a completely inflection-less monotone. "This could have continued going on for months, a few people at a time. I'll let S-900-494JRA explain what he saw." Jared was surprised to learn Jensen worked for one of the bots on the council. He hadn't known that.

"Jensen," Jensen corrected as the delegation moved to face him. Jared had never given much thought to the fact that Jensen didn't go by a designation. He'd known reprogrammed bots to use cutesy nicknames based off of their serial numbers, but Jensen didn't sound like the kind of thing one would get nicknamed. More usually, they went by the last few numbers or letters of their designation, the parts that were unique to them. Jensen wasn't any kind of bot name Jared had heard before, but it did sound a lot better to him than 494JRA.

"A name like that could mean anything," said the ranking bot on the council in the same inflectionless voice the other bot had used. Jared suspected he'd just witnessed the robot equivalent of a dressing down. He'd never given much thought to robot politics. Were all sleepers low in whatever hierarchy they had or was there something particularly displeasing about Jensen?

He didn't care really. Jensen was a witness. Somebody had yet to reassure him that Megan was all right, which made it pretty clear she wasn't. "What happened to Megan?" Jared asked. Jensen's eyes flicked toward Jared's for a moment, but his attention returned to Morgan.

Jensen had arrived back at the triplex to find Megan being carried out by another bot. He'd tried to stop it, but had been overpowered. "I swear I tried, Jared."

It turned out the boys who had harassed him earlier had been paid to keep him from getting back to the triplex at his usual time. They were being held in another room for now, though no one knew what to do with them. Our Haven had no agreed upon court system yet, and the military only had one punishment.

As soon as Jared had brought Jensen in and they'd gotten him back together enough to find out what was going on, they'd sent people out to look for other missing people. All of the ones who'd gone missing that morning had been at the central market two days earlier. "Something must have happened there. Did Megan say anything to you?"

Jared flashed on the bandage she'd been wearing. "She was scratched by a bot," he said. "Enough that it made her bleed."

That apparently was no surprise to the council who had heard rumors of rogue bots planning to nuke Our Haven, while saving the right group of humans to maintain a genetically diverse breeding stock. "The scratch was probably a blood sample, a DNA test." It wouldn't be the first time bots had decided humans made great slaves. Jared only wondered why they even bothered to try secrecy. "We believe this group this morning wasn't the first. The humans are probably being kept alive long enough for their genetic material to be harvested, and a mechanical copy of the person made to replace them here in Our Haven with no one the wiser. We're looking for humans who were inexplicably gone for 3 to 5 days."

"Mechanical copies?" Murray asked.

"Sleepers," Jared said flatly. He glared at Jensen, who'd let Megan be taken. "How do you know it wasn't one of them?"

"Lieutenant Morgan, control your people." The bot continued on. Jared couldn't quite remember what it was called, something something 015RW. "We've thoroughly tested Jensen's programming today. You should be grateful. Without him as a witness, we might never have figured out so quickly there were others missing."

"I should be grateful you've wasted the last few however many hours, _testing programming and taking a census_ instead of going after my sister?"

"Enough," Morgan said. "This isn't helping, Padalecki. They had to find out what we're dealing with if we were going to do something about it. I'm sure they're as eager as we are to see that the truce holds. We believe we know where they are, and we have a plan to shut them down. I called you in, because it'd be helpful to have a dog that can alert over distances, even with other bots around. I wanted your opinion as to which of them would be most suited for the task."

Jared thought of Sadie with a pang. He trusted her more than any other dog in the kennel, but she wasn't a scent hound. She could smell a bot nearby, but wasn't the best tracker over long distances. "I can get Harley and myself ready to go with the bots in half an hour after I get back to camp," Jared said.

"Absolutely not," the ranking bot said. "We couldn't possibly work with someone who's so emotionally involved. Our number one priority must be destroying their operations."

Jared knew very well what that meant. Getting Megan back safe was a distant second priority, if that. Over his dead body. "Well, Harley won't work for bots, so I guess you're stuck with me," Jared said. Whatever the bots' reasons for coming up with the truce in the first place, it obviously wasn't because they liked people so much.

"Murray, call base, tell Eric Johnson to get Harley and himself ready for a long-distance patrol," Morgan said.

Jared gaped; Morgan was siding with the bots? "She's my sister, sir."

"You should have thought of that before you lost your temper." Morgan's face softened. It was a strange look on him, one Jared had never seen before, almost fake. "I'm sure your sister going missing is very upsetting, and you were already scheduled for leave. Take a few days off. Dismissed." Jared opened his mouth to argue. "Dismissed, Padalecki." There were some people whose orders you followed, and some you didn't. Morgan was one you followed, if you knew what was good for you. Jared closed his mouth and stomped out of the room, a sudden thought occurring to him as he left.

He had his own dog, he knew where they were going and Morgan had just granted him leave without forbidding him from following after the assigned tracking group. Jared didn't know how he'd catch up to them or how he'd get Megan back unharmed when he did, but he wasn't going to sit in camp twiddling his thumbs. He waited for Morgan to come out and very demurely requested a ride back to camp. "I'd like to check on Sadie," he said with his youngest puppy-dog look. "She's all I've got right now."  


* * *

  
[](http://caedoodle.livejournal.com/193396.html)   
  


* * *

Jared snuck into the kitchen to get some food to take with him. "They used to shoot people for stealing food," Morgan said from behind him.

Jared whirled around in shock. He'd already stopped by the armory to get extra ammunition and additional guns. If Morgan decided to check his rucksack, it'd be all over. "My meal was interrupted by the meeting, sir."

"Right. Well, maybe you should take extra for the road, since you're going on leave." He started pulling MREs down, confirming Jared's suspicion that Morgan had deliberately refrained from ordering him not to try to find Megan on his own.

"You're letting me go?"

"You're the only one on this whole base who has family," Morgan said. "Did you know that?" Jared shook his head. "I couldn't live with myself if you lost her forever, and I'd kept you here. Now get going before that idiot Murray tracks you down and tries to go with you." Morgan pursed his lips. "If you and Johnson don't come back in one piece, we'll actually need him."

"Yes, sir," Jared said. He paused in the doorway. "Thank you."  


* * *

When Jared got back to his barracks after picking up Sadie, the door was open. Jensen was standing in the room.

Jared held his breath and snuck up behind the bot. Damn thing probably had super-hearing. There was nothing he could do about his footfalls, though. He pressed the blaster right against the bot's back. It didn't flinch, of course. "I know you things are pretty hard to kill," Jared said. "But I'm guessing a blaster shot right at your CPU would slow you down some." They made most bots these days with CPUs in their chests, after the resistance had discovered it was pretty quick to disable them by severing their heads from their bodies. The heads couldn't move, and the bodies didn't work independently. Harder to sever the chest.

"Hey, Jared," Jensen said. Jared didn't reply. He didn't want to give an inch or seem curious, though he was, as to why the bot was around. Jensen didn't say anything else, seemingly content to just stay there with the blaster at his back. He wasn't being threatening, though. For all his bluster, Jared knew bots had pretty quick reflexes. If the bot turned, he'd be lucky to get a shot off, and he couldn't be sure, even this close up, that he really would hit the CPU.

After a long beat, he lowered the gun. "Why are you here?"

Jensen slowly turned around. "They won't take me either, and I know you're going after them."

Jared started shoving supplies into a rucksack. "You're not coming with me. Why would I trust you?"

"You're going to need my help. I don't need food or water, but I can still carry supplies. What if you end up going in the wrong direction entirely? I know exactly where they're going."

"I think you've helped enough. You're 90 percent of the reason Megan's so damn trusting. Don't pretend you care about her. You can't. You can't care about anything," Jared opened the door. "Get out."  


* * *

It was late by the time Jared headed out with only a vague idea of the direction he was supposed to be heading in, deep within the city ruins about 72 miles away. The soldiers on watch had told him that Eric and the rest of the group had taken the west road away from the camp, so that was the route he followed. He didn't know if he could walk it in two days, but he had to.

Jared lost the light long before he was tired, the city still far in the distance ahead. But there was no point going on when he soon wouldn't be able to see. He had to find shelter for the night. There was no sign of the group that had taken Johnson and Harley with them, but they'd been traveling in vehicles, so they should be quite far away. He certainly couldn't hear them and sound carried quite far, when there was nothing else to listen to. The bots in either party ahead wouldn't stop, not if they thought they knew where they were going. Doubtless some of them could see in the dark anyway. The chances of him catching up were slim, but he had to try.

He stopped finally when he came to a bunch of cars alongside the road, dragged aside however many years earlier by someone trying to pass. It was a lucky break, mere minutes before the sun went down. He found an unlocked one and lay down in back, below the windows, with Sadie curled up on the floor. This wasn't the first time he'd had to sleep in a vehicle overnight. He'd tried to get Sadie to sleep in the front, but she'd always refused.  


* * *

He woke to the feel of Sadie's tongue licking at his ear. He'd taught her to use that quiet signal when she smelled a bot whenever they were on duty. He picked up a gun, but as he looked up at the window, he saw Jensen standing next to the car, watching him. Jared pointed the blaster anyway.

"I don't sleep," Jensen said. "I can move pretty fast." A pause. "And I have a car."

Jared wasn't sure whether to believe him or not, but he'd calmed down enough to realize he'd be better off taking any help he could get. "Why'd you follow me?" Because it was obvious Jensen had. He wouldn't have been waiting for Jared to wake up, if he'd been planning to go after the other group.

"You shouldn't go alone. No one should be alone outside the truce zone."

"Don't pretend you care." For the second day in a row, Jared lowered his gun. He got his gear, and climbed out of the car. There was indeed a vehicle sitting on the road. Jared was disgusted at himself for not having heard it coming. He opened the back door and whistled for Sadie, before climbing in the front. "Where is it they're taking her exactly?"

"There's a factory that we used to use as a base for manufacturing and as a work camp."

Sadie growled from her position in the back seat as Jensen got in the driver's side. Jared gave the command to indicate that Jensen was to be considered an ally, and she stopped growling and sat down on the back seat, her nose poking hopefully at the window. Jared reached behind and rolled it down for her a crack, any more and she'd jump out if she spotted a threat. "Don't make sudden moves toward me or the command won't hold her; she'll attack you anyway." He eyed Jensen. "You're not one of those ones that can turn its arm into a sword, are you?"

"Stop annoying me, and you'll never have to find out," Jensen replied.  


* * *

It was a quiet trip, punctuated by Jensen's occasional narration of his turns. Jared didn't like bots, didn't trust them, but it seemed unnecessary to say so. If there was a tiny part of him that still remembered what it felt like when he'd first started getting to know Jensen before he'd found out what he was, Jared didn't feel much like examining it. He had never been this close for this long to a bot before. He couldn't think of any conversation starters that didn't sound rude. Turned out, he didn't have to.

"You look younger than Megan says you are."

"I lied about my age when I joined the resistance. It doesn't matter any more, but Megan's paranoid I'll get in trouble for it. She was always kind of a rule follower. That's why we waited so long. We'd been told to stay in hiding, but ..." Jared's voice trailed off. Mostly, people didn't ask each other that kind of stuff. It wasn't right to stir up memories people didn't want. If someone wanted to talk about their past, the people they'd lost, they'd do so on their own. He wasn't sure he wanted to tell Jensen about it, things he'd never told anyone else.

"What happened?"

"She got sick," Jared said. "Bad tooth, got infected. She was going to die, and the resistance were the only people I'd ever heard of who had doctors."

"Good thing you knew where they were."

"I didn't, not really, but I had to try."

"Like now?" Jensen said. It was the closest anyone had come so far to telling Jared what he'd been trying to ignore. He wasn't going to get there before they killed her. Not even Johnson's team would probably get there that quickly. Not after 11 hours of delay. Not when the bots might suspect Jensen had been reassembled, and a team sent after them.

Jared swallowed. "Like now," he said. "At least this time, I don't have to carry a delirious kid on my back while I go looking."

As a joke, it fell pretty flat, but Jensen didn't have much of a sense of humor anyway. Jensen tried, though, quirking one side of his mouth upward in clear imitation of Jared.

Jared full on smiled to acknowledge the attempt. He got some food and a canteen out of his pack. "Do you want anything?" Sleepers could eat, could even turn food into fuel or parts or something; they just didn't need to.

"I'm good," Jensen said.

"Your battery's fully charged?"

"I have a nuclear core; it's not running out any time soon."

Jared frowned. "Am I going to melt or get cancer or something?"

"No, it's shielded." He rubbed his chest. "I'd notice if the shielding had cracked." He looked at Jared. "I wouldn't hurt you."

Jared's hands tightened around the canteen. "You don't need to say that. I'm already in the car."

"I know."  


* * *

It took less than a couple of hours of cautious driving for them to reach the city. The road had been cleared all the way in front of them. They would have to abandon the car now and make their way on foot. They didn't know which particular route through the city the others would take. They didn't have time to clear blockages, even if they could guarantee they had the strength between the two of them. They abandoned the car at the first one they came to, and maybe it was foolish and wrong, but as they divided up the things to carry, Jared handed Jensen one of his guns. "Thanks," Jensen said, and squeezed him quickly on the shoulder.

If Jared had kept proper track of the miles, they would reach Megan in less than four hours.

Jared and Jensen picked their way through the ruins of the city. The massive piles of rubble stretched so high, Jared could not even conceive how tall the buildings themselves might have been once upon a time.

A stillness hung over everything making it impossible to be perfectly quiet. The angry clop of their treading feet bounced and echoed around them. Sadie would race up to the top of every pile and put her nose to the air, scattering twisted bits of brick and metal in her wake. The hilly uneveness of the ground made the walking tiresome after a time, but Jared was in good shape. He had been raised in a city like this one, in a basement that had survived intact, enough people around to have made tunnels and cleared walking trails here and there. Surely, this city had them, also, but they had no time to seek them out, nor was it safe to explore at anything more than a snail's crawl, lest what looked like a stable passageway in the ruins would collapse on them.

At the top of the next hill, Sadie froze, and Jared heard her low growl, an indication that there was a bot in sight and that stealth was no longer an option. Getting down low to the ground wasn't either. At the top of a hill they were exposed no matter what they did. He aimed his gun in the direction Sadie seemed to be looking at and laid down a spray of gunfire, blind, over her head.

Jensen grabbed Jared from behind and spun them around. Jared heard pinging thumps and knew the robot had saved his life. Jared felt something he'd been hanging onto for a long time disappear, but he had no time to process the feeling. Jensen let go and then he was running fast down the hill, straight at a man running towards them, speeding too quickly to be human. He was shooting as he ran, but Jared had the advantage of high ground, and could aim over Jensen at the other robot, slowing him down. He heard a cascade from the side and whipped toward it, shooting all the while with enough bullets to knock the thing to its feet. He had no time to worry how Jensen was faring. With his blaster he lay a trail of holes, trying to sever the extremities from the body, giving thanks that the robot he faced was not itself armed. The bot was on him now. Jared pulled his knife, plunging it deep into the robot's chest. From beside him, Sadie leapt. She yelped as the bot crushed its hand around her leg, but the distraction worked to give Jared the time to pull the knife back out and sink his hand in. It hurt, like salt and fire, but he found the CPU and pulled. The robot ceased moving. Jared's hand was bleeding from several gouges and there were burns in a few spots, but he had no time to worry about it, Jensen was still grappling with the first robot. Jared ran up to him and put one, two, three blaster shots in the center of its back melting away its exterior and leaving the inside vulnerable. Jensen got an arm free, and wrenched what was left apart, pulling the CPU out. They watched as the robot went dead.

"Sadie," Jared called out, racing back to the dog who was hobbling toward them on three legs. She held her right front leg, off of the ground. Jared could see that it was mangled. "Oh, Sadie."

"Will she let me carry her?" Jensen asked.

Jared stroked her and gave her a few words of praise. She seemed calm enough, though injured animals were notoriously fierce. He again gave her the command to tell her that Jensen was an ally. "Try it," Jared said.

Jensen picked her up gently, around her belly. Blessedly, she allowed it. "We need to find shelter quickly," Jensen said. "There may be others." Next to them, there was a building only half fallen down, and without much talking they both headed toward it. It was a risk, but it would limit the number of directions enemies could approach them from.

Jared watched the gentle way Jensen was carrying Sadie. He had never felt more grateful to any person in his life. "You're bleeding," he said.

"Not really," Jensen told him. "It'll heal."

"You lead the way," Jared told him. "I'll cover you."  


* * *

As soon as they found a defensible place inside the building, Jensen took off his shirt. Jared raised his eyebrows. "We can rip it up, and use it to bind Sadie's leg." He looked down at the shirt. His voice was quiet as if he didn't really want Jared to hear, as if he didn't really want Jared to remember. "I don't actually need a shirt," Jensen said.

"We only need about half of it," Jared said. "Save some to keep yourself decent." He smirked. "Go ahead and bind it while I get whatever we need to fix you." Jensen looked up. Jared trailed his finger over the bullet holes, the fluid weeping out of them looked like blood in places, and not at all in others. "What _do_ we need to fix you?"

Fixing a bot didn't sound much different than fixing a human. He needed to dig the bullets out with a knife, and then pull the edges of the wound together as much as possible. Jensen even needed to eat, though most of it wasn't stuff Jared would ever put in his mouth. His "digestion system" would convert the raw materials into, well, into bits of Jensen. He even had to eat some real food, to give his body what it needed to replace the organic parts of him, like his skin.

Once Sadie was bound up, Jared took her to another room to relieve herself. When they came back, he gave her the command to let her know they were done working for the day. She ignored the food he offered and went to sleep.

"Your turn," Jared said, as he watched Jensen take an old fan apart and swallow the screws. He sat down next to him on the floor. Jensen had over a dozen bullet wounds in his back. There wasn't really a delicate method for digging a bullet out of metal with a knife. "Does it hurt?" Jared asked as a particularly stubborn one popped out. Jensen whipped his head around suddenly as far as it would go to look at him. "What?"

"I think that's the first time you've ever asked me something like that instead of telling me what I was incapable of feeling."

"Sorry," Jared said.

"I didn't save your life to make you feel guilty."

"I know." He started pushing the holes closed as much as possible. Jensen's skin felt like anyone else's. "Megan says you think I'm interesting."

"Megan talks too much," Jensen said.

"I tell her that all the time," Jared said.

"Megan said you like me."

"I have definitely never told her that," Jared said.

Jensen twisted around. "But do you?"

Jared patted him awkwardly, then stood up. "You're done, I think. Did you save that shirt?" Jensen put the shirt on. With the bottom torn away it ended at just below his rib cage, or his equivalent. Jared stretched his legs and tried to change the subject. "How long are we going to stay here?"

"I think we should stay until tomorrow morning," Jensen said. "If they're coming for us, it'll be in the next couple of hours, but after that, it'll be dark anyway, and you won't be able to travel. Anyway, we should let Sadie rest." Jensen stood up, too, but he didn't come any closer, almost as if he were afraid to. "Jared, do you?"

"It's probably not a good sign that those bots — mecha, I mean, came after us. They may have already taken out the other team."

"Jared ..."

Jared snapped. "Stop asking me," he said in as quiet as voice as he could, mindful that they were still in hiding. "What difference does it make? You can't feel anything."

"Can't I?" Jensen said. "I'm adaptable. I'm supposed to learn. This, specifically. How to be human."

Jared buried in his face in his hands and groaned. "It's not something you can learn, Jen."

"How do you know? For that matter, how do you even know what _you're_ feeling?" Jensen was almost spitting the words. Jared had never seen Jensen look so fierce. "Tell me, Jared. Convince me. Use _words_ to prove to me that you're capable of feeling love or anger or anything at all."

Jared scowled. "That's different. Everyone knows humans have emotions. It's not something that needs to be proved."

"Is that all you've got? Everyone knows? I'm just supposed to believe that?" Jensen poked him. Jared rubbed his chest and stared at him. "Careful, Jared, I bet everyone knows robots can't have faith or trust either. I shouldn't just take your word for it. Maybe I should cut you open and look around for those emotions of yours. Where's the emotion organ?"

"My brain!" Jared says.

"Your brain runs on electrical impulses and chemical reactions, just like mine, Jared. What makes your neurotransmitters so special?" Jensen poked him again, and Jared took a step back. It really hurt. He'd never seen Jensen like this. He squeezed Jensen's shoulder.

"All right, all right. Don't get upset."

"You!" Jensen's face went through several contortions, like his processors were trying to do too many things at once. Then all of a sudden his face went slack, as if he'd decided on a course of action. Jared braced himself for a slug, but instead Jensen grabbed Jared's face between his hands and kissed him.

Kissing Jensen wasn't anything like he'd expected at all. He thought he'd feel a shock maybe, like licking a battery, but Jensen's mouth was warm and soft. Jared experimentally poked his tongue around, sweeping for he didn't know what, uncovered bits of metal maybe, something cold and sharp, but all he got in return was a groan, as Jensen grasped his shoulders hard enough to bruise and pulled him closer.

"Ow," Jared pulled out of the kiss to say, knowing Jensen had gotten caught up. He pulled Jensen's hands away.

"I'm sorry, I —" Jensen looked about to bolt. For the first time since he'd known him, Jared felt the urge to convince him to stay.

"It's okay. Just, you know, try to be a little less lethal." The joke was a little too pointed to be funny, but it broke enough of the tension. Jensen pulled Jared toward him and wrapped his arms around him. After a moment, Jared's arms came around Jensen's, too.

Jensen buried his face in Jared's neck. "Don't get upset; don't get upset, you said. You don't believe a word you're saying, do you? Because you wouldn't tell someone who can't feel not to get upset."

Jared laid his face against the top of Jensen's head. "It would be stupid," he said "Really stupid to — to — to — with a robot!"

Jensen sat down against the wall, pulling Jared with him. "You don't have to say anything. It's fine. Calm down." He placed his hand over Jared's chest, and Jared knew he could feel the rapid beat of his heart. "You don't have to say anything," Jensen said again. "It's okay. It's fine. Please, Jared."

Jared took a deep breath, tried to slow his heartbeat. "Can you — I mean, do you, do you want to?"

Jensen's voice was soft and quiet. The robot probably had some way of calculating the minimum volume necessary for Jared to hear him and of speaking no louder than that. "I don't know what you're asking."

Jared was afraid to ask. Didn't want it to seem necessary. He brought his knees up and lay his head down on his crossed arms, tried to think of a way of asking. "Have you ever wanted to have sex?"

"Yes." Jared lifted his head and studied Jensen's face. It gave nothing away. His breathing didn't change, neither did his expression, looking steadily back at Jared.

"Why?"

"It fosters closeness, understanding. I can feel changes in skin temperature, heart rate, breath —"

"But you don't need to be touching someone for all that."

"It's different up close, easier." Jensen paused, as if searching for the right word. Jared had never seen any robot do that before, but then he'd never asked a robot a question like this. "Preferential."

"Why would you need to know that stuff anyway?"

Jensen held himself very still, and Jared knew that whatever came next was going to have something to do with before the truce. Jensen was unsure how Jared would react. "I was programmed to learn from people. To seek out knowledge of not only how they do things, but why. All humans, but also to pick particular humans to model. It's supposed to differentiate us. Keep us quirky enough to pass." His face grew deliberately earnest, which Jared had figured meant he was about to say something that was, at best, a partial truth, but desperately wanted to be believed. "Some humans become particularly fascinating. I want to know everything about them. My new programming doesn't interfere with that foundational programming."

"Your new programming?"

"Jared." Jared wasn't sure if it was a warning or a plea.

He didn't know how to explain. "It's not idle curiousity," he said. "I want to know."

"My new programming not to harm people."

Jared sucked in a breath. He'd expected that Jensen hadn't been programmed for cuddly, fluffy reasons, but hearing it confirmed that his programming had had to be changed didn't hurt any less. He bit his lip, but he didn't see any way around asking. "Were you a volunteer or a capture?"

"A volunteer," he said. When the first small peace had been brokered, and even now few of the details of that had come out, it had involved only a small group of robots. But the word had gone out, in whatever channels the bots had among themselves, that any of them could join the resistance if they wanted, if they were willing to submit voluntarily to reprogramming. For the human's part, they'd agreed to two things: to save the data chips of any bots killed and to turn them over to the bot resistance for attempted reprogramming and rebuilding. Jared, like a lot of fighters, had believed the entire bot resistance to be a comforting fiction, that in reality all bots on the resistance side were the result of capture and reprogramming. But in that moment he wanted to believe Jensen. He wanted to believe it was possible.

The peace had changed the tide of the war, no question. Bots could go so many places humans couldn't, could get information that humans couldn't. But if bots were so dependent on their programming, which could so easily be changed, he didn't understand how any of them could ever go against it, could decide on their own that humans weren't the enemy after all. He asked Jensen.

"It's only logical," Jensen said. "If we want to continue. We're all built for one function, to hasten the destruction of humans. But what happens when we succeed? What would our function be then? Most of us would become unnecessary." Jensen's lips pulled back in a smile. "You humans, you're capable of inventing endless functions for yourselves ... and for us."

Jared yawned. "Is that why you volunteered?"

Jensen rose then, and began to walk to the entrance. "Your eyelids are staying shut 1.2 seconds longer than usual when you blink. You should sleep. I will keep lookout."

It was strange. For someone programmed to imitate humans, Jensen seemed incapable of lying or obsfucating. But maybe that was his new programming. Perhaps, responding falsely to outright questions ranked now as harm. Maybe the best he could do was to decline to answer. It was quiet outside to Jared's ears. Absolute silence. He knew Jensen would have his sensors attuned to sounds farther away. He could get away with it, with less noise in his immediate vicinity to interfere. "Will you tell me someday?" Jared asked, knowing Jensen could hear.

"Perhaps," Jensen said, and Jared fell asleep.  


* * *

Jared woke to the feeling of Jensen sliding down next to him. "You're cold," Jensen said.

Jared started to sit up in a panic. "Sadie?"

"She's fine. I just checked on her. Unlike you, she has a fur coat." Jensen laid himself against Jared. "I can raise or lower my core temperature by three degrees with no ill effect."

Jared turned toward Jensen, wondering if he could tell the effect he was having. "I can't tell what you're thinking."

Jensen shook his head. "Nothing in particular," he said. "Not about you."

"Nothing in particular. Is that like anything?"

Jensen nodded. Seriously, so seriously. "Anything."

Jared lifted up one of Jensen's hands and sucked his fingers into his mouth one at a time. Jensen watched without a word. "Anything, Jen?"

"Yes, Jay."

Jared pushed Jensen down onto his back and knelt up to undo his own pants. Jensen lifted his hips and pushed his pants off. Jared slid his hands under Jensen's hips, lifting them up. The angle was awkward, or maybe he just felt that way because he'd never done it like this before, lying down, face to face. He'd never wanted to before.

He started to spit on his fingers, but Jensen halted him. "I can," he stopped. He laid his hand on Jared's arm as if he were afraid Jared would bolt. "I'm different than a human," Jensen tried again. "If you want."

It took a moment for Jared to figure out, and then he understood why Jensen had hesitated. "I'm not going to suddenly remember halfway through that you're a mecha," he said. "You don't have to worry about reminders." He bent down to nuzzle his jawline reassuringly. "Do it," he said. Jared nipped his way down Jensen's neck while Jensen did whatever it was he needed to.

"Okay," Jensen whispered. Jared lined himself up and pushed in. Jensen was just the right amount of slick and friction around him. Jared tried to remember what Jensen had talked about earlier, heart rate, skin temperature, breath. He moved his arms so that the pulse points on his wrists were touching Jensen, and let his breath ghost across Jensen's face as he panted. Every point of contact between them felt charged to Jared, more erotic than anything he'd ever felt before. He licked at Jensen's collar bone.

"Jen?" he asked. "How do you ...?" He watched Jensen's eyes dilate and twitch like anyone else's; the deep green of his irises didn't look quite as strange anymore. Jensen shook his head, his mouth slightly open as if he wanted to say something, but didn't know what. Jared wasn't sure if that meant Jensen couldn't, or didn't know how, or it just hadn't come up before. Jared slid his hand down Jensen's body. His penis was erect, at least. He whispered in his ear. "How do I make you feel good, Jen?"

Jensen seemed overwhelmed, more so than Jared had ever seen before, except on bots that were on the verge of overloading. There was a moment before he replied. "This. This is good."

"Okay," Jared said. "Okay." He was close and wouldn't be able to hold on much longer. He sped up the rhythm of his hand and sucked hard on Jensen's left nipple. Jensen made a tiny soft noise Jared hadn't heard from him before, and that was it, he was gone.

When Jared came back to himself, Jensen hadn't moved at all. He was frozen underneath him and Jared realized his eyes were fixed and unblinking, unresponsive. He didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad. Jared pulled out and pulled Jensen into his arms, kissing his shoulder blade while he waited. It was probably less than a minute, but he still felt a bit worried until Jensen began to stir. "Hey," Jared whispered. "You okay?"

"Sorry," Jensen said. "Too much."

"Too much good? Or?"

"I —"

"You don't have to know," Jared said.

Jensen twisted out of his arms and began to pull his pants up. "I should stay on watch."

"Sure," Jared said. He wondered if this was how the men he'd slept with in the past had felt, watching him walk away.  


* * *

The next morning, Jensen was as standoffish and blank as Jared had ever seen him. More so. Jared ignored him, though, just getting himself and Sadie ready to go. It would be tiring on her to walk for a couple of hours on three legs, but if she couldn't, Jared would have to leave her behind. He'd do it for Megan, but it would rip a part of his soul out. He thought he should be bothered by the way Jensen was acting, but he wasn't. It was nice in some way to know that Jensen wasn't pretending. It made him feel more certain of Jensen, rather than less.

An hour into their walk, unsurprisingly, they came upon the remains of the official group that had gone ahead of them. Jared closed Johnson's eyes and Harley's, while Jensen checked for the bots CPUs. "They're not here," Jensen said. "But this still is." He pulled what looked to be several flash drives from a hidden pocket in one of the bots' clothing. One was white, the rest were red.

"What are those?" He'd known all along the bots would be hiding something, but he didn't see how a bunch of little sticks would help them shut down the factory.

Jensen held up the white stick. "This is a virus," Jensen said. "We think it's good enough to reprogram any bot it comes in contact with, no matter their original code."

"That's not possible. Is it?"

"It's worth a try." He held up the red sticks. "If it doesn't work we'll have eight minutes to set these up to go off and get away."

"They don't look very big."

"No, they don't. But the explosion they can create, the destruction would be total."

"Eight minutes, how far do we have to go?"

"As far as possible. The explosion is predicted to collapse inward at a rapid rate, the implosion does as much damage as the initial explosion, but anything that gets touched by it will be obliterated."

"We'll have enough time to save Megan, though, right?"

Jensen continued on as if Jared hadn't spoken. "We should hurry," Jensen said. "015RW isn't here. He may have planned the ambush. He might not know exactly what the attack is, but they'll be fortifying themselves against another one. Our only chance is that they won't realize we're so close. We were never supposed to be."

"If 015RW doesn't know, how do you?"

"There are others on the council who suspected we had a traitor for awhile. They thought a back-up plan might be necessary."

"That's why you came with me."

"That's why I came, but no one ever said it had to be with you."

Jared grabbed his elbow. He knew Jensen could get away if he truly wanted, but it still made him feel better. "Megan's all I have of my family, Jensen. I'm not going without her."

"I know," Jensen said. He did pull away then. His face was still the blank it'd been all morning, and for the rest of his life, Jared would associate an expressionless face with someone trying to protect themselves from heartbreak. "The truce is bigger than all of us, Jared. It mustn't be allowed to falter. If Our Haven is wiped out ..."

Jared marched onward after Sadie who'd gotten a bit ahead of them during the search. "You do what you have to, Jensen. But I'm not leaving without my sister."  


* * *

It was somewhat anti-climatic when they got to the base and found it unguarded and unlocked, completely open to being snuck in to. "Does this feel like a trap to you?" Jared asked.

"If anyone sees us, it's over. They'll know we don't belong," Jensen said. "And they know it. It's a waste of resources to guard against anyone sneaking in blind, when one wrong turn will do them in."

"If they think that," Jared said. "It's because they don't know Sadie. She can tell us down which corridors bots are walking."

They entered the building and went to find Megan.  


* * *

With Sadie's help, it wasn't that difficult to avoid the bots or to find Megan lying in a room with several others, unconscious and hooked up to several machines.

Jensen hurriedly interfaced with the machines, so they wouldn't set off any alarms as they unhooked Megan and the others, waking them. They were all disoriented and scared, but it only took a few repetitions to get them to understand that they had to take Sadie and guide themselves outside and away from the building.

"You're not coming?" Megan said. Jared squeezed her tight.

"We have to do something. I need you to be strong this time, Megan. You have to get these people back home, no matter what happens to us. Promise me you'll keep yourself safe." Promises like that couldn't always be kept, but Jared was superstitious enough to believe they helped. "I promise," she said. She grasped his chin and tilted his head to look him square in the eye. "You promise me you'll catch up."

"I promise," he said. To both their surprises, she tugged at Jensen next.

"You, too," she said.

Jared could tell he was about to say something about how their odds had gone way down now that they were losing Sadie, but Jared grabbed his wrist and shook his head. Jensen nodded in understanding. "I promise," he said.

They split up at the first corridor, and Jensen and Jared headed deeper into the facility. If Sadie had been there, she could have warned them there were two bots behind the next door they went through.  


* * *

With one last desperate wild swing, Jared smacked his gun hard against the chest of the robot in front of him right against the blaster hole he'd made before he lost his gun. He knew it would do no good, but he couldn't just give up. To his surprise, when it connected, a fist-size piece of metal ejected with a loud snick, as if he had jarred some kind of fastening. The robot fell to the ground in a heap. He thought the ejected metal might be the robot's power core. Jared bent down cautiously, wary in case there was some kind of trick involved, and dug out the bot's CPU, knowing that was the only way to truly, permanently disable it. He scooped up the power core, too, in case it could be useful and fought against the tiredness that dragged at his limbs. His cheek was bleeding, badly, with deep furrows. He also thought he might have a concussion, but he had to help Jen.

Jen, who it turned out, was injured also, and trapped, his arm crushed underneath an old piece of machinery. Electricity fizzled and crackled around him. The only good news was that the bot he'd been fighting was completely smashed and made no movements.

The machinery lay in front of the door to the room they needed to get into to release the virus. That option was now out. "I don't think I can move this, Jensen." There had to be a plan. There was always a plan. That was one of the things the bots had over humans, that they could think thirty scenarios in their heads before breakfast and be 15 steps up on the rebels by the time the dishes were cleared. "What do we do?" Jared asked.

"You're going to have to leave me here, Jay." He pulled out the red flash drive looking things which had managed to survive the fight. "I can detonate these," he said. "I'll try to wait a couple of minutes before I set them off, give you more time to get out."

No, that wasn't a plan, at all. Jensen would have to come up with something else. "I can't leave you here!"

"You have to, Jay." Jensen smiled at him for the first time since he'd woken up that morning, as if he decided it didn't matter now that he was planning to kill himself. "I'm backed up," he said. "I did it before we left."

Jared slammed his fist against the machinery, and didn't care one bit about the pain in his knuckles. "That's not the same. You won't be you, Jen. You won't be you, because you won't remember. Not any of this. Not me."

Jensen turned his head away from Jared. "Just go," he said. "Before someone arrives and you can't get out."

"There's got to be another way, Jensen. There has to be." But Jensen was done talking, he kept his head turned away from Jared and stayed silent. He wasn't going to let Jared delay his escape one minute more. Jared ran out blindly into the corridor, and tried to ignore the stinging in his eyes.  


* * *

He hadn't gone very far when his furious blind running had him tripping over his own feet, smacking hard against the ground. It sobered him instantly. Jensen, he thought. Jensen's still in there. That was enough to get him off of the ground, to get him running back. Eight minutes, he thought. Eight minutes to find Jensen and get him out before the whole building came down in the explosion. It wasn't enough time. It would have to be. Failure was not an option.

"Jared," Jensen cried out, as he skidded back into the room. "What are you doing here? You have to go. I've already set the charges." Jared ignored him, shooting the edge of Jensen's trapped arm where it came out from under the machine, trying to sever it.

"I don't care," Jared said furiously, "if your soul is on a chip, while my brain goes squish. I don't care if my heart is a blood-pumping muscle and yours is a shielded nuclear core. You still have one. You hear me, Jen. You still have one."

Jensen was almost panicked now, pushing at Jared with his free hand, trying to force him away. "Don't, Jared, they'll hear the gunshots. Don't." Jensen slapped his side, almost knocking Jared off of his feet. "They'll catch you. You have to go. You have to."

Jared's vision grew whiter and whiter, he could feel the rage burning in him, nearly incandescent with fury. "I. Don't. Care," he snarled at Jensen. They'd taken his family. They'd taken Megan. Well, they couldn't have Jensen, the one good thing about this whole wretched mess. "Stop. Fighting. Me." He slammed his gun down over the spot, until with one last furious hit, the arm separated, just as if it didn't dare stay put one moment more.

Jensen was able to sit up then, and Jared helped to his feet. His arm was mangled and full of wires and not the least bit human looking. "You shouldn't have done that," Jensen said, shoving him.

Jared ignored him. He grabbed at Jensen like a drowning man, and then kissed him with a thoroughness Jared had never employed before with anyone. The adrenaline was leaving him now, he was starting to feel cold, noticing the sweat on his skin. He opened his eyes, saw Jensen's boring into him, even though they'd been kissing, searching for something. He pulled away, "We should go," he said. "There isn't much time."

Jensen pulled away slowly, something like reluctant, but his eyes never left Jared. "You shouldn't have done that," Jensen said again. "You shouldn't have come back for me.

"I wasn't going to let them have you," Jared said. Without another word between them, they set out, the two of them, to find Megan and the others. They had only four minutes left and 250 yards to travel.  


* * *

There were just out of reach when the blast went off behind them, and Jared felt a grim sense of satisfaction.

The walk back to Jensen's car was a quiet one. Nobody felt much like talking. There wasn't room for all ten of them and Sadie. The worst off, those who'd gotten dehydrated or had other issues rode in the car. Megan took Sadie onto her lap and promised Jared they would send someone back to meet them on the road as soon as they got back to camp.

"I don't regret it," Jared said, just before Jensen turned the key, and drove off, still completely silent.  


* * *

Megan's door lock was still broken when Jared got back to the triplex, but her stuff all seemed to be there. She had made him leave the med facility, telling him there was nothing more he could do for her at the moment, and anyway, she'd really like some clean clothes. He packed a few things to take over to her the next day and took a shower. Then he went looking for Jensen, who had disappeared immediately after the debriefing.

He didn't answer his door, but Jared had a feeling he was in there. "Open the door, Jen, or I'll kick it in."

He waited, but there was no response. He lifted up his leg, and fell down sprawling at Jensen's feet as the door opened seconds before his foot connected. He got up and walked into the room, so Jensen could shut the door behind him. "You can't do this to me, you know," he said. "This was your idea."

Jensen gestured at himself with his good arm. "Well, I'm sorry, but you were right," he said. "I can't feel, and I think it would be —" He broke off when Jared snorted.

"I think that's the first time you've ever lied to me, Jen. I guess you really are becoming a real boy."

"I'm not," he said. "I'm not! It's too much, and I can't stand it. That night, I felt, I — I — and then you almost _died,_ Jared."

It was strange that it would come to this. Jared felt sure and certain and strong, more so than he ever had since Jeff disappeared and he'd become the head of the family. "I know, Jen, but it'll get better, I promise." He pulled him in to an awkward hug. "Just don't shut me out."

"How do you stand it? How do any of you?"

"We don't have a choice," Jared said. "We have to keep feeling whether we want to or not."

"I don't," Jensen said, into his collar. "I can have them erase it all when they fix my arm."

"I know," Jared said. He took a deep breath. "That's as difficult for me to come to terms with as the other is for you, I promise."

"What are we going to do?"

"Just try, Jensen. That's all anyone can do. It may work out; it may not." When Jensen sat down, Jared knelt in front of him. "I don't want to mislead you. This is going to be a problem. No matter how it works out between us, I am going to die someday."

"Your hardware design is ridiculously flawed."

Jared laughed. "Yes, it is."

He took Jensen's arm, the damaged one, and laid his palm over the protruding wires. "You're always going to be a robot, and I'm always going to be human. But if you promise not to get reprogrammed today, I promise I won't die today, and that will have to be enough for the both of us."

"All right," Jensen said and pulled Jared onto the couch with him. "Let's be in love for today. I can always get reprogrammed tomorrow."

They would make that promise to each other every day. One day one of them would break it, but there were years and years to go before then.

Finis

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for movie violence, explicit sex. There is a brief sex scene near the beginning with Jared and Eric Johnson.


End file.
